the backpack
by lapsesoftime
Summary: It was heavier than his dad made it look, and he'd thought this must be adulthood, the shouldering of this weight. A study into the life of Jughead Jones' backpack.


Jughead Jones lives his life out of a backpack.

Objectively, he knows that things are different now, are better. That he could maybe stand to unpack his underwear and buy some decent bed sheets.

It's not that he hasn't thought about it- he has, most nights, lying on the lumpy bedsprings and trying to work out whether his posters would make the peeling wallpaper more or less depressing.

He's wanted a proper home for long enough that there are times he's overwhelmed by the need to try. Frames are found for his pictures of Jellybean, he buys a mug, he even lets his mum come over and teach him the art of the deep clean. Picking up his socks and transporting them to the wash basket is something Jughead's fairly certain Archie only manages on a good day, so it's with no small amount of pride that he reports he knows the correct way to hold a hoover.

As the piece de resistance, he picks up the boxes of films from his old boss at the drive in and invites Betty over to help him sort through them. They start up a weekly film night, after that, something for Jughead and something for Betty, tangled up in the dips of his couch. She brings pizza and he microwaves popcorn and somehow she always leaves the smell of her shampoo, floral sweetness lingering in the bathroom and slicing through the dusty air when he closes the curtains, making it feel impossibly like home.

He still doesn't unpack the bag, though. Maybe because every time he stands back, every time he looks at that frame or flicks through the shelves of film noir, all he can think is how much of a fool he is.

The apartment's four floors up, the size of a mouse infested shoebox and with the damp smell to match, and he's pretty sure a whole days wages drip out the leaking tap at the kitchen sink, but it's so close to becoming comfortable that Jughead's terrified to open his eyes. The backpack lingers by the bedroom door, a dark shadow reminding him of the unpaid electric bill and next month's rent.

The possibilities feel like physical presences to him sometimes, one unpacked set of drawers away from home and one late payment away from landing arse first on Archie's couch.

The backpack is first used when he's ten years old, and on his worst days, when the weight of all he owns in the world seems simultaneously too heavy and too light, he looks at it and he swears he can smell the smoky excitement of a happier time. Like maybe if he closes his eyes and wishes hard enough, his grandad's old sleeping bag and a budget wind up torch could be the only weight he's struggling to hoist up onto his shoulders.

Fred and FP had taken them camping fairly often, back before everything tumbled down into a bottle of vodka and FP spat Fred Andrew's name with beer soured breath. Even then, it was clear there was a difference between them, with Archie's shiny new trainers and fancy branded marshmallows and Jughead's ripped up roll mat and grass stained jeans. But they'd noticed stuff like that less then, or maybe they just hadn't cared, sat beneath the whirring solar heater and making their way through their seventh smores as they worked out their plans for the zombie apocalypse and Fred pointed out the names of the stars.

There had been something wonderful about it back then, a thrill Jughead had felt in the pit of his stomach, like going with your parents to get your first set of keys or being trusted to catch the bus on your own. Maybe if Jughead had known how often he'd be on his own, if he had been able to pre-empt the gnawing in his stomach when he looks in the cupboards for a dinner that isn't there, or the sinking feeling of setting three alarms because he knew knows there were are no parents there to drag him out of bed, he might not have been so excited by that first time rolling up his stuff in a foam roll mat ready for a week travelling through winding country roads.

As it was, there had been a wide-eyed excitement on his and Archie's faces that day, a proud tilt to their chins desperately striving to emulate Fred Andrew's self possessed posture. Contrary to popular opinion, Jughead had not been born a cynical seventy year old man espousing the evils of capitalism and the death of the American dream.

If he tries hard enough he can remember what it felt like, to idolise his father and to live in no world that didn't always come back to that two bed trailer on the South side of the tracks.

He'd been so excited, when FP came into his bedroom to ask if Jughead wanted to give him a hand packing up the car. Trying to pull on his dad's backpack, he'd thought absurdly of Jellybean tottering around in their mothers high heels. It was heavier than his dad made it look, and he'd thought this must be adulthood, the shouldering of this weight.

Contrary to popular opinion, Jughead Jones was not born a cynical seventy year old man.

Once, he'd been a ten year old boy, excited by a backpack and the endless opportunity it seemed to present. Once, he'd been a ten year old child who thought his dad dictated the movements of the sun. Because for him, he did.

The rusty solar heater and the mouldy sleeping back are still sat in the backpack at the bottom of the wardrobe when FP arrives home four years later, just short of blackout drunk and slamming doors so hard the glass shatters straight out their frames.

His mum tells him to stay with Jellybean, his sister crying faintly as they crouch behind the bathroom door. Her eyes are wide and frantic as he cards his fingers through her hair and whispers some nonsense story about a hermit monk living in the middle of a forest by a lake, doing everything he can to drown out the noise of their parents as they scream.

He only intends to grab a glass of water for his sister, maybe peek into the living room to make sure his mum is okay, but the instant he stands the door collides with the side of his face with a sickening crunch, the slurred expletives FP throws over his shoulder bouncing around Jughead's brain with a nauseating white light that washes everything in pain.

His dad doesn't stop apologising for hours after he wakes up the next day, crying almost as hard as Jellybean and attempting to scrub at the blood sprayed all over the bathroom walls as Jughead's mum impatiently swats his hand away.

Jughead nods again and again that it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, and his mum sighs in defeat and tells FP never to do it again as she orders a new bucket of paint for the bathroom on credit.

Darkness defeats his mum easily, dragged from her GED by a positive pregnancy test and some guy on a motorbike she thought was the one. She was meant for more than this, she tells Jughead, fingers drumming on the kitchen counter and bloodshot eyes staring far away. His school report- - straight As, he wants to scream, as if anyone cares to know- is left discarded on the kitchen counter with Jellybean's half eaten yogurt pot.

He nods and flips the switch on the kettle, turning his face away. The last thing in the world she needs right now is to see how much she's hurting him, this son she loves, pushed down right to the bottom of an exhausting priority list.

It's only temporary, she tells Jughead a year later, clasping his sister's hand tight as she presses a hasty kiss to his brow and reminds him to do his homework and brush his teeth. Jughead nods because of course there's not enough room at Gran's house, and of course it makes sense that Jellybean should be the one to go.

She _should_ be the one his mum picks- in her place, Jughead knows he would pick Jellybean, too. It's not insensitive but practical, getting the both of them out before anything happens, before the rollercoaster their father's put them on gets too much. Dad's friends are unemployed, uninspired for the most part, and lethally bored. This house is no place for a ten year old girl. He's relieved, honestly. Jellybean is the single wholly good thing in his life. He wants her happy and he wants her safe, and that means he wants her away from here. He understands. Adulthood has taught Jughead to be pragmatic. He _understands._

He sits in the dark waiting for his dad to get back, wondering what side of FP he can expect to see tonight, and realises that he could _understand_ anything, if he tried hard enough. What he will never know is why understanding doesn't do a damn thing towards making it hurt less.

Three months later, he places his stuff in his dad's old camping bag and pulls everything he owns onto his back, and all he can think is that he wishes his dad had warned him, about the weight.

He expects to go on a road trip with Archie that day. Instead he sits on the dusty sidewalk until it gets dark, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat and trying not to get embarrassed by the looks he attracts. When he finally gets up to go home, he finds he cannot bear to go back.

So he goes to the drive in, abandoning his childhood but doing his homework and brushing his teeth all the same. His parents might not want to see his report card, but he was meant for more than this, and he isn't giving up hope.

Happiness for Jughead is his family in the same house again. It's a tiny dark haired girl tottering about in her mother's heels and a dad who never touches a drop of drink. Happiness for Jughead is the warmth of a solar heater and the taste of marshmallows on his tongue.

It's his best friend and their dads sat round the camp fire, telling ghost stories and planning for impossible what ifs. Jughead Jones switches out his light, squeezes his eyes tight shut, and tries not to think about the fact that he treated Archie not showing up that day like it was the zombie apocalypse.

When Jughead Jones was ten years old, his father was his hero, and being let down seemed like an impossible what if.

He gets four months respite from the backpack. Leaves it sat in the corner of the dusty storeroom, an unnecessary arrangement seeing as his boss only shows up every other weekend and if she cares what Jughead's stuff is doing piled up in the office like that, she certainly never lets on.

Jughead leaves his dad a couple messages letting him know he's safe, not that he deludes himself FP actually cares, and calls his mum to let her know that he loves her and that he'll pick Jellybean up Thursday morning. Jughead can't fight the resentment he feels rising in his chest, but he also knows she's doing well right now. He can't compromise that. He can't make her feel ashamed.

FP drops a line back three weeks later saying maybe it's for the best. Jughead goes over to his dad's once a week anyway, checking there's food in the cupboards and maybe changing the musty sheets or clearing away the bowls of stale pretzels and takeout cartons.

Blood fills his mouth when he lies there alone, chewing on his cheek until the sharp coppery tang is all he can taste. He wants to shake some sense into them all, wants to scream until his lungs are nothing more than shattered particles of exhausted dust, but what would be the point in that at all? In the absence of a father figure, it falls to Jughead to help, and the words rolling round his tongue feel like tensile barbed wire behind his teeth, the kind that spill from your mouth before you can stop them, the kind that hurt, the kind that you regret.

But who is he helping, and why, and for what? Family is a joke right now, the kind that falls out a Christmas cracker, cue groans and Great Aunt Gladys' consistent mantra of "I don't get it". They're scattered across the county, this _family,_ settling like splintered glass on the ground and sticking into Jughead's heels every time he tries to move _._ He hasn't seen Jellybean in two weeks and her absence settles like a tired extra weight on his chest, expanding in his throat every time he tries to take a breath.

Insecurities transform into facts when he turns out the lights, when the darkness and the isolation sit like physical presences in the room, and all he knows is that he wants someone to know, another living soul to give him a little warmth and a little comfort, to assure him that _he's going to be alright_. His voice turns hoarse from disuse, some days, and he falls further and further into the stories in his head. Right about now, he'd settle for nothing more than an acknowledgement that he exists.

'Jughead Jones woz here', he writes, because someone should know.

For an instant, the relief of seeing his dad out in the daylight, away from all that dust and smell and clutter, overwhelms him, and he can't seem to prevent that insane hope that overtakes him. But then he realises maybe his dad wants Jughead to go with him, and the pain of admitting that that's something he can't do feels like a punch in the gut.

FP's got this weird look in his eye, though, like Jughead's some old acquaintance he's bumped into on the street, and he's trying to work out who's got it worse. Jughead's been avoiding him, since the drive in closed, he knows that, and he wonders if maybe it's because he can't work out which truth would be harder to bear. Maybe his dad really loves him, but loves the alcohol more. Or maybe he just straight up doesn't want Jughead around.

Anger rises, hot and bubbling in his throat like bile, and it's a conscious effort of will to push it down, to remind himself that FP has an addictive personality, and the opportunity to see his son, a son he loved enough to take camping, would be too good a high to miss.

Jughead's overwhelmed, almost convulsed, by the desire to be small enough to be swung up onto his dad's shoulders. To view the world from a height, to contribute to instead of carrying the weight.

The moment is gone as quickly as it came, and he's back to feeling nauseous at the prospect of the question he's not quite sure he wants to see, forming behind FP's eyes.

'I'll figure it out Dad' he says. As he walks across the drive in grass one final time, he pulls up the straps of the backpack, and adjusts to the weight.

'Jughead Jones woz here', he writes, because he was, whether anyone wanted him to be or not.

He doesn't unpack properly, not even when Betty's floral carry on joins his black canvas by the wall. Not when she recruits Hermione to help work out a plan for sharing the burden of their payments, and not when she buys them soft flannel sheets. Not even, though it must be admitted he's tempted, when she wakes him up with bacon and eggs and orange juice, brought in on a tray like it's no big deal.

He doesn't unpack the backpack, that much is true, but he does a great deal towards helping her fill up the drawers.

It's for her, at first, because he doesn't want her homeless or hopeless, because she deserves better and because she was meant for more than this. Because he never wants her shouldering that kind of weight.

But they meet their bills, and he finds a publisher in New York interested in his book. Betty fixes the leaky tap under the sink, and he hoovers up her mess, and all of a sudden he's struck by how comfortable their bed is, and how lovely the light looks as it falls all soft like that, filling the cream coloured room with glorious evening light.

He's struck by how beautiful she looks, head resting on his chest and tears glimmering on her cheeks as she finishes up the last pages of his book.

"That bad?" he asks, with a laugh that he wants to be nonchalant, but that comes out neurotic and high pitched.

She props herself up on her elbows, her fingers warm as she applies a soft, wonderful pressure to the corner of his mouth.

"Jughead" she whispers his name like it's sacred somehow, special, her voice hoarse and lovely, speaking low and soft even though there's no one else in the room, and he swears she should be able to hear his heartbeat, feel the movement of his throat. She touches his collar bone, tracing a line down to his heart. "You've written _us._ "

He doesn't need any more to understand what she means, to know that she isn't talking about _us_ Romeo and Juliet (sans the death), but about all of them, the friends who have managed, somehow, to make him feel comfortable. To make him feel less alone.

He doesn't need any more to know that she has understood _him,_ in the way no one else ever has, even before the dark ages, even before his life got sucked into that vacuum of empty bottles and unspoken words.

"I love you." She tells him, her eyes wide, and Jughead's not surprised that she manages to make him into every cliché he's ever hated, because God, those eyes are a path straight down into Betty Cooper's soul. "And you're going to be a great writer someday." Her brow puckers slightly, and her hand moves through his hair. "You're a great writer _right now."_

Jughead's never been self-conscious about his work before, projecting himself outward, using words to seek sense in a world that seemed to hold nothing but hurt. Looking at Betty Cooper, he wonders if maybe he was so unselfconscious because he didn't think he had much to give, because this looks at him like he's worth something, like she sees some spark of brilliance that no one else ever could, and suddenly he feels like ants are crawling under his skin.

He's been vulnerable with Betty Cooper so many times, been vulnerable with her in a million ways he never thought he could be, yet somehow he doesn't think he's ever been vulnerable with her like this.

Jughead has long prized himself on being a logophile. But right now, all he can think is that he's never going to have the words to tell her just how much this means.

The next morning, Fred Andrews pulls up in an oversized Columbia University sweatshirt and a chauffeur cap, behind the wheel of one of his work vans. Archie gives them a hand loading their boxes into the back, and Betty puts their keys onto the table with last month's rent, giving him a tearful, nostalgic smile.

He hauls his backpack onto his back, slots his hand into hers, and walks out without looking back.

The backpack sits by the front door as Jughead helps Betty off the bottom steps, baring his teeth in what he hopes is a reassuring grimace and desperately attempting to suppress how afraid he is.

"If you're planning on taking the baby home in that thing, you can think again." Betty grits out, letting out a breath as the pain recedes and loosening her grip on his hand. "I ate your mother's weird cheese and I agreed to take the ceremonial shoes, but I absolutely refuse to have my baby placed in that thing."

Jughead tries not to grin because my baby my baby _our baby,_ and wonders if maybe this is such a good idea, bringing the backpack to the birth of his child, having a child at all, but it's far too late for any of that, and it's important for Betty to know- for _him_ to know- that Jughead won't ever leave his son or daughter suffering under this kind of weight.

"It's just some baby supplies." Jughead reassures her. "You know, nappies, fresh clothes-"

"Fresh clothes?" Betty demands, glaring at him as what he can only assume is another contraction hits. "Jug, I saw bugs in that thing the other day. It has mould!"

He brings the backpack anyway, slinging it onto the backseat as he gives her a hand into the car and shrugging apologetically when she raises her eyebrows.

"We have a _baby,_ Jughead." Betty whispers, leaning her head into his shoulder as she hugs their son closer to her chest, running the pads of her fingertips over his tiny bare feet. Jughead grins, his heart so full he's certain it can't contain all this, wondering if today might be the day it finally cracks in the best possible of ways.

"You're only just realising this now?" he murmurs, lips against her ear but unable look away from his sons sleeping face.

"No, I mean we really, truly, have all the documents, a midwife witnessed it, it 100% happened _have a son."_

"I know, Betts." He murmurs, unable to keep the reverence he feels in this moment from seeping into his tone, and he doesn't know how to express it, how grateful he is that she's come into his life and brought him all of this.

"He's ours." She whispers, and the words sound so wonderful coming out of her mouth that Jughead closes his eyes to savour them, feeling the warmth seep from his child and into his blood, filling his entire being with an impossible explosion of feeling it would take another dozen lifetimes to explore.

"I'm so afraid." She whispers.

"I know, Betts." He repeats, pressing his lips to her brow, stretching just a little further to entwine his fingers with hers, a partner in supporting their son's weight. _Ours ours ours._ "Believe me, I know."

The backpack splits on the way back from the hospital, but it doesn't matter. The weight of his son in Jughead's arms is wonderful and terrifying and beautiful and so much more than enough.

Forsythe Pendleton Jones the second is ten years old when his dad gives him that backpack, a child with a map that took up a whole wall of the trailer in the room he shared with three siblings he never wanted any child of his to meet. A lot of dreams and plans had come with that black canvas, marked with push pins his brothers used to use to trace his skin while their mum turned the other way.

When he was bored, FP used to trace his fingertip across the route he planned to go, crossing roads and states, then continents and seas, in the back of Freddie Andrews's pickup truck. Ten years older and acting like the older brother he'd never known, Fred had been a diligent friend to FP, sending emails from exotic sounding places with names FP couldn't hope to pronounce.

He'd spend the hours while his brothers were away in the dark, pouring over books by Steinbeck and Therou and imagining how wonderful anywhere but here must be.

Drop offs for his brothers was all it started out as, little jobs to earn the cash he needed to survive a couple months on the road. And if he ever felt guilty about the stuff he was storing in that backpack, if he ever felt queasy at the sensation of its weight between his shoulder blades, or caught his dad staring at him with a little more than uneasiness in his eyes, then he assured himself it was for the best. A means to an end, that was all.

When he uses his money to buy a motorbike he sees Gladys Yates eying approvingly, he assures himself it's a just cause. Besides, he can do more for his brothers now. He'll easily earn it back.

He doesn't earn it back.

It's Danny who introduces him to drink. Beer first, working their way up slowly into something stronger, until he's finishing a couple bottles of vodka most weeks and so hung-over at school he can't so much as blink straight. The books and the highlighters, the maps and the push pins, fade into the distance when he drinks, until he can't summon the energy to care about the money he hasn't managed to save.

Gladys drinks, too, and together they discover that there's more than one way to escape.

" _Where do you want to go?" he asks her, grinning at her in the musty back room of her dad's two bed apartment. "I'll take you anywhere you want."_

 _She hesitates for a moment, thinking, before throwing her arms around his neck. "Paris. You can take me on the back of that motorbike and we'll go eat croissants and drink coffee by the Seine."_

 _It's a cliché, he thinks, and Paris isn't anywhere near the top of his list. Yet she looks at him as if she thinks he could make it happen, and for a minute her voice inspires vivid yearning, reawakening that dusty old dream through a haze of drunken stupor._

 _She vomits a minute later, and FP holds back her hair as she heaves. He never does see Paris. But she does, sat at a cafe with bright sunlight winding through her greying hair, infinite contentment stealing through her as she bounces her newest granddaughter on her lap and watches Betty and Jughead wipe ice-cream off their son's face. There's more than one way to escape._

Then she falls pregnant. And FP discovers there's a few more ways of getting stuck, too.

He stops drinking after that. Nineteen year old FP knows how much of a temptation that stuff poses to him, how thoroughly it could wreck his life.

He doesn't stop associating with the serpents, though. Fred Andrews returns from Europe with a pregnant fiancé and a grand scheme for starting a company together, buying FP with encouraging words and sweeping, optimistic depictions of the future. But they need start up funds. FP Jones has never had a dad who could afford to invest all that much in him, and he doesn't want his own son to ever be forced into recognising the same.

Just light jobs, he promises Gladys on their wedding night, looking around the trailer and falling just short of an encouraging smile. Just for now.

The backpack is waiting at the door on the night of Jughead Jones' birth, filled with nappies and baby grows and other alien, innocent things. FP flings open the door so hard it falls off its hinges and throws the bag over his shoulder, helping Gladys impatiently into her mum's beat up old car.

It sits in the corner when he first holds his son, feeling edgy and awestruck and filled with so much hope he feared he might implode. Unaware of the weight he was going to ask those tiny shoulders to take.

 **AN: Thank you so much for reading!**

 **This started out as a companion piece to my other riverdale fic, but halfway through writing that seemed to diverge into two separate fics, and because you can never have too much fanfiction I figured I'd just split them up and have two Jughead introspection-y stories. So I will be posting that sometime in the future. I also have a Betty fic to finish up, because all the introspection!**

 **Victory dedicated to Becca the best beta, god of fanfiction, who deserves all the love for the time she put into this fic. I owe you like a million Easter eggs plus my firstborn child, and I hope this counts as a major triumph in your number grudge.**


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